Investments in smart building technologies are increasingly being seen as a way to find energy savings within public sector organisations, while continuing to drive critical sustainability goals. With the majority of energy use within businesses stemming from the use of air conditioning, heating, and lighting, automating these services through smart building technologies can deliver substantial savings to an organisation - helping with the initial investment in the technology and beyond. We discuss both the quick, easy wins an organisation can expect to see from investment, as well as the longer term ability to analyse energy consumption and identify further potential savings based on building occupancy and utilisation.

As organisations continue to develop and expand their digital operations, the amount of services and licences that need to be managed and utilised is also steadily increasing. Whether due to a lack of time, resource, or a combination of the two, we’ve identified that many organisations are struggling to optimise their Microsoft licensing to best enhance their organisational security. To help our clients achieve the best possible security posture, ITGL has developed a new Microsoft 365 Security Maturity Assessment solution, which includes a robust evaluation of up to 170 different controls within a variety of Microsoft portals.

Zero Trust is becoming a core pillar of cyber security for many organisations – and with good reason. We break down the concept into its simplest parts, and step through exactly how it differs from the more traditional approaches that came before it. We’ll review how its adoption in the public sector has helped protect critical systems and data, as well as how it can help insulate organisations from risks such as those posed by third-party suppliers and endpoint devices. We take a high-level view of how to get started with Zero Trust, before ending on the potential user impacts that implementation can have, and how to mitigate any suboptimal user experiences.

With traditional preventative methods increasingly being bypassed by modern threats, we take a look at how Managed Detection & Response can take a proactive approach to reducing your cyber risk. We’ll examine the decisions that need to be made when choosing between these approaches, and discuss how important response times are in a world where organisations typically measure responses in weeks and months, while bad actors work on a timescale of hours. With organisations themselves only identifying roughly one in three breaches, can MDR effectively plug this detection hole? Our security experts will cover exactly how MDR is placed to solve these challenges, and provide advice on how it can support an organisation’s compliance obligations.

In this episode, we delve into the evolving landscape of public sector security, particularly regarding the protection of critical infrastructure. We'll unpack the three key challenges in Sec ops and discuss the significant impacts of skills shortages, offering realistic solutions for organisations. We also explore the risks around visibility across the estate, breach response preparation, offset options for smaller public sector organisations, and advice for protecting end point devices amidst remote working. Lastly, we'll provide tips on leveraging existing infrastructure.

National Cyber Security Centre: https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/collection/incident-management/cyber-incident-response-processes